Introduction to Maria Montessori's Learning Theory

 

   

I know I mentioned something about a Montessori  type school in a past post on the constructive learning theory. I thought I would take a minute and talk about how Maria Montessori's learning method plays into this theory, as well as a few ways she found to help om her own.
     Maria Montessori is one of the few learning theorists that we learned sbout in our early childhood classes who was female. Her beliefs about education is why those who decide homeschooling may not be for them, but love the idea of the freedom of learning should see if a montessori school may be nearby as these schools most closely resemble a homeschooling day to day life than public and private schools do.
     Montessori believed children learn best through exploration and play. The most important time for a child to learn is under the age of six which is it a lot easier to find early childhood montessori programs, but there are schools set up for older ones too. The children are put in 3 different age groups, but some schools use 4. Infancy through age six are kept grouped together with the same teacher for their time period there. Ages six through twelve are all kept together with the same teacher, although some schools have started to group six to nine seperate from nine through twelve. And finally the teenage year age groups are taught together with the same teacher. These age groups are done purposefully because she believed that the younger children will receive an abosrbant mind through watching and working with the older children much better than from a "teacher."
      Her curriculum has five key points. Sensory and perceptual development, self-help skills, language skills, physical and motor skills, and social and emotional growth. Her schools have teachers who are more like mentors, there to observe when a child may need help, but not to tell them and instead show without words. There is about three hours worth of active learning in a school day with teachers introducing new concepts and ideas, but the best teachers in this set up other than the children is the environment of the classroom. The classroom should be filled with the things that are close to naturalistic as possible and focused on the concepts the teachers are hoping for the children to be able to explore and learn from together and on their own.
     This learning and teaching style has now begun to move into a pre school Catholic religious ed program called Catechisis of the Good Shepherd. You may find you have a parish nearby that offers this or you may end up feeling called to help start one up for your parish. Teachers for this program must go through the catachesis training before being able to teach.